Beekeepers and wine-makers join forces

Thursday

Aug 3, 2017 at 4:44 PMAug 3, 2017 at 4:44 PM

Eric Wildstein Gazette staff TheGazetteEric

Honeybees rejoice! National Mead Day is buzzing into a Gaston County home brewery store.

On Saturday, the Alternative Beverage shop in Belmont will host free demonstrations to the public on how to distill mead—a type of wine--and preserve the bee population, which produces honey, a key ingredient in mead. National Mead Day was originated by the American Homebrewers Association and is recognized in Congress as the day to celebrate meads.

“We try to gather a combination of mead-makers as well as beekeepers and we try to intermingle these so that they can share their knowledge and appreciation for one of the finer things that God gives us, and that’s the marvels of bees,” said Jess Faucette, the store’s owner. “So we try to educate people on using insecticides and protecting the bees as well as utilizing the honey—what they make—so that we can have better enjoyment of life.”

Mead is made by fermenting honey with water, yeast and often fruits or spices. It can be made easily in just a food-grade pale at home in dry, semi-sweet and sweet flavorings, often in less than a half-hour. Depending on the mead’s flavor, it can be ready to drink in as few as 30 days, with sweeter wines taking up to a year to mature to a proper taste.

Mead is largely considered the first alcoholic beverage ever developed because bees will often create their hives in the hollows of trees. When it rains, the water comes in and can dilute the honey created by the bees and will combine with wild yeast in the air, creating mead.

Faucette first opened Alternative Beverage in Charlotte in 1973 as a convenience store that sold mostly beer and other beverages. But within a couple years he began selling home beer-making supplies. When sales of that equipment took off he was able to get out of what he called the “rat race of selling gas and beer.”

When he opened the store’s current location about eight years ago at 1500 River Drive in Belmont, he joined the Gaston County Beekeeper’s Association and began keeping his own bee hives behind the shop. He says there were only about a dozen people who came to the association’s annual beekeeping program at that time. Last year, the program attracted more than 100 people who are interested in preserving the bee population.

Faucette says preserving bee colonies is pivotal to agriculture. Bees pollinate many crop plants that yield foods such as apples, cucumbers, and onions. For example, a bee has to visit a cucumber about 13 times for it to come to full growth, according to Faucette.

“We really need people to become more educated about bees and share that knowledge,” said Faucette, who grew up in eastern North Carolina. “If we continue to lose our bees at the rate we are, if we don’t try to replenish them, we could find ourselves where nations would be starving because bees help to pollinate so much of the food that we have grown and that we think of having every day.”

Mikel Walker has been a regular customer of Faucette’s for about 25 years as a home brewer of beer and wine. But he recently began tending his own bee hives and in-turn, became interested in learning how to make his own mead. He plans to attend the demonstration event at Alternative Beverage on Saturday to get some tips from local mead experts.

“I gathered some honey out of the hives last week and so I’ve got some excess honey and I thought I’ve got all the equipment because I’ve made beer and wine forever, so I’m sure all that will fall right into making the mead,” said Walker, who grew up in Kings Mountain but now lives in Kaiser. “I’ll just experiment with it and see what kind of a taste I can come up with on it.”

On Saturday, Alternative Beverage will have workshops on Mead-making beginning 11 a.m. led by Kevin Martin. Supplies such as yeast, flavoring and nutrients are available for a fee. Allen Thompson and Burton Beasley will host workshops on beekeeping and honey. The event ends around 3 p.m.

Proceeds from the event will be donated to Wounded Warriors Project. For more information, call Alternative Beverage at 704-825-8400.

You can reach Eric Wildstein at 704-869-1828 or Twitter.com/TheGazetteEric.